Harvey Weinstein, “We Do Not Speak For Quentin Tarantino.”
“We do not speak for Quentin; he can and should be allowed to speak for himself,” says the ‘Hateful Eight’ distributor’s representative as board members pressure Harvey Weinstein to clean up the mounting mess after Mr. Tarantino called police “murderers.”
After keeping mum for more than a week, The Weinstein Co. is breaking its silence on the spiraling controversy surrounding Quentin Tarantino’s comments about police brutality.
“The Weinstein Co. (TWC) has a long-standing relationship and friendship with Quentin and has a tremendous amount of respect for him as a filmmaker,” a Weinstein Co. representative said in a statement. “We do not speak for Quentin; he can and should be allowed to speak for himself.”
Tuesday, Mr. Tarantino addressed the controversy for the 1st time, telling the LA-T’s that he would notbe intimidated by the growing number of police boycotts aimed at him. “Instead of dealing with the incidents of police brutality that those people were bringing up, instead of examining the problem of police brutality in this country, better they single me out,” he said. “And their message is very clear. It’s to shut me down. It’s to discredit me. It is to intimidate me. It is to shut my mouth, and even more important than that, it is to send a message out to any other prominent person that might feel the need to join that side of the argument.”
He added: “All cops are not murderers. I never said that. I never even implied that.”
Behind closed doors, sources say TWC board members have been pressuring co-founder Harvey Weinstein to clean up the mounting mess that has emerged in the wake of Mr. Tarantino calling police officers “murderers.” Sources say some on the board are fearful that the company’s upcoming Tarantino film, The Hateful Eight, will take a direct economic hit thanks to a widening police boycott of the director. TWC and its predecessor, Miramax, have released nearly all of Tarantino’s films, beginning with 1992’s Reservoir Dogs.
The controversy stems from comments Tarantino made at a rally in New York on Oct. 24 when he told the crowd, “When I see murders, I do not stand by. … I have to call a murder a murder, and I have to call the murderers the murderers.”
In his interview, Mr. Tarantino was defiant. “I’m not taking back what I said,” he said. “What I said was the truth.”
One by one, the NYPD, LAPD, Philadelphia PD, Houston PD and Chicago PD unions, representing the 5 largest police-department unions in the nation, announced that they are boycotting Mr. Tarantino’s films.
On 2 November the national president of the Fraternal Order of Police, the world’s largest organization of sworn law-enforcement officers, sent a letter to the Weinstein Brothers, saying that the FOP’s 330,000 members have joined the boycott of The Hateful Eight, which is scheduled to be released Christmas Day.
“In addition, we will advise our members not to accept assignments or perform off-duty work, such as providing security, traffic control or technical assistance to any project involving Mr. Tarantino,” wrote FOP president Chuck Canterbury.
Hateful Eight, a Western starring Samuel L. Jackson, Kurt Russell and Jennifer Jason Leigh, and a simple explanation likely won’t assuage police groups, who are particularly agitated by the timing of Mr. Tarantino’s comments. The rally came just days after an NYPD officer was shot and killed while chasing an armed suspect in East Harlem. Furthermore, sources say a straight-up apology seems highly unlikely.
“Quentin is not one to apologize,” said a source. “He might try to explain himself, but the idea of Harvey getting him to apologize is completely absurd.”
Stay tuned…
HeffX-LTN
Paul Ebeling
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